Lord Bacon says,—­“The relations touching the force of imagination and the secret instincts of Nature are so uncertain, as they require a great deal of examination ere we conclude upon them.  I would have it first thoroughly inquired whether there be any secret passages of sympathy between persons of near blood,—­as parents, children, brothers, sisters, nurse-children, husbands, wives, etc.  There be many reports in history, that, upon the death of persons of such nearness, men have had an inward feeling of it.  I myself remember, that, being in Paris, and my father dying in London, two or three days before my father’s death I had a dream, which I told to divers English gentlemen, that my father’s house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar.  Next to those that are near in blood, there may be the like passage and instincts of Nature between great friends and great enemies.  Some trial also would be made whether pact or agreement do anything:  as, if two friends should agree, that, such a day in every week, they, being in far distant places, should pray one for another, or should put on a ring or tablet one for another’s sake, whether, if one of them should break their vow and promise, the other should have any feeling of it in absence.”

This query of Lord Bacon, whether an agreement between two distant persons to think of each other at a particular time may not produce an actual nearness between their spirits, is suggestive.  People partially drowned and resuscitated have often described their last moments of consciousness as flooded with memories, so that they seemed to be surrounded by the voices and countenances of those they loved.  If this is common when soul and body are approaching dissolution, may not such concentration of loving thoughts produce an actual nearness, filling the person thought of with “a feeling as if somebody were in the room”?  And if the feeling thus induced is very powerful, may not the presence thus felt become objective, or, in other words, a vision?

The feeling of the nearness of spirits to when the thoughts are busily occupied with them may have led to the almost universal belief among ancient nations that the souls of the dead came back on the anniversary of their death to the places where their bodies were deposited.  This belief invested their tombs with peculiar sacredness, and led the wealthy to great expense in their construction.  Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans built them with upper apartments, more or less spacious.  These chambers were adorned with vases, sculptures, and paintings on the walls, varying in costliness and style according to the means or taste of the builder.  The tomb of Cestius in Rome contained a chamber much ornamented with paintings.  Ancient Egyptian tombs abound with sculptures and paintings, probably representative of the character of the deceased.  Thus, on the walls of one a man is pictured throwing seed into the ground, followed by a troop of laborers; farther on, the same individual